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Allen guaranteed that some people would call Match Point his best since Crimes and Misdemeanors
by...pretty much remaking it, albeit with a younger mistress and
bourgeois user. And the self-plagiarism is begging you to mock him:
there's the scene where the mistress threatens to call the wife! The
ethical discussions with imagined characters! But the thing is, it's
not like the existentialist anguish was original the first time either;
it's what you do with the archetypical plot that matters. And damned if
he doesn't pull it off. It really is a return to form.

Granted, it ain't Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Not only because the plot is inevitably better when it's used the first
time, but the first one had some great comic sequences as well, and the
multiple plot strands added resonance to each. But that's his best
movie...

Woody Allen has had one of the most brilliant careers in the history of American filmmaking and yet he suffers from a general critical disappointment. "Well, geez," goes the reaction to each new movie, "That wasn't as good as (Put your own favorite here.)"

When it's just as easy and more realistic to say, "That was fun, and a whole lot better than most of the junk that passes for movies these days. I can't wait to see what Woody's up to next!"

And you won't have to wait long. His next movie's right around the corner. While Match Point is in the theaters, Woody's at work finishing up Scoop. The man makes close to two movies a year, an incredible pace. But then geniuses tend to be prolific.

What I've heard of Scoop makes me nervous, though. All I've heard is that Woody's acting in it himself and Scarlett Johansson is the leading lady. But that's enough and it's alarming.

Please, Woody, resist!

A rule of thumb for judging Woody's movies since Crimes and Misdemeanors is that their quality is inversely proporptional to the amount of screen time he gives to himself.

This doesn't explain Deconstructing Harry (lots of Woody but good), Anything Else (Much less Woody, but mediocre), and Alice (No Woody, but terrible).

But it does cover Match Point and Sweet and Lowdown (No Very low Woody; excellent) and Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Hollywood Ending (Wall to wall Woody in both; both regarded as disasters).

I gave the last two movies the skip, not because they sounded terrible as movies, but because I didn't want to watch Woody embarrass himself trying to play the character he played 30 years ago. Hollywood Ending sounded as if it might have been good if Woody had cast someone handsome and dashing, someone you could believe both Tea Leoni and Debra Messing would devote themselves to and want to sleep with and who could still do a pratfall---Kevin Kline would have been perfect.

Curse of the Jade Scorpion needed a younger actor who could have given a convincing impersonation of the young Woody.

Back to the point, the Woody Proportion Rule also depends on what sort of role Woody gives himself. If he gives himself a large but supporting role, the movies tend to be good to excellent, and this goes back to include Crimes and Misdemeanors and Hannah and Her Sisters.

So we have: Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Everyone Says I Love You, and even Small Time Crooks, in all of which, like Crimes and Hannah, Woody either played a supporting character or second banana to his leading lady.

Before I get on to giving my ranking of Allen movies, a quick word in praise of Julia Roberts. I'm not a fan of hers. She leaves me cold. (The blonde actively despises her.) But she's a good actress, even if the movies she's in usually don't call upon her to prove it. And in Everyone Says I Love You she gives a lesson to young actresses who find themselves cast opposite Woody as his love interest. The way to handle it is to do what Julia did---shrink. Somehow she managed to turn down her movie star's high wattage and play a woman five or six years older than she was at the time, which was 29, a woman on the verge of middle age, pretty but ordinary, and vulnerable enough to be almost believably attracted to Woody Allen, sixty (!) at the time but almost able to pass for 10 or even 15 years younger.

I didn't believe Goldie Hawn would ever have married him though, even when they were both young.

I did believe they were good friends.

Ok:

Great Woody:

Annie HallLove and DeathManhattanCrimes and MisdemeanorsHannah and Her Sisters

Very Good Woody:

Sweet and LowdownDeconstructing HarrySleeperThe Purple Rose of CairoOedipus Wrecks (from New York Stories).

The Curse of the Jade ScorpionHollywood EndingMelinda and MelindaMatch PointCelebrity

I didn't list Take the Money and Run, Bananas, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex because they are apprentice works and although they've got lots of good jokes ("Tell funnier jokes.") they're pretty poor pieces of filmmaking, almost amateurish, in fact. As Scott Lemieux points out, over the years Allen has grown into a great director; whatever the quality of his scripts, his camera work and the performances he coaxes from his actors are tremendous. It would be interesting, if impossible for fans, to look at the movies he's made over the last 20 years and judge them only on their directing, as if he hadn't written them. Even Love and Death and Annie Hall are pretty pedestrian examples of filmmaking in comparison with Sweet and Lowdown and, except for Diane Keaton (and Carol Kane in her lovely, brief cameo in Annie Hall.), all of the actors in them ham it up and do schtick. Nobody else started acting in Woody Allen movies until Manhattan.

And I didn't list Stardust Memories because it belongs to another universe. It almost doesn't count as a movie. It's a dramatized essay.

I think some critic described it as a celluloid thumb in the eye of Woody's fans.

I also left out my favorite Woody Allen movie of the last 10 years, because it wasn't written or directed by Woody.

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"pretty poor pieces of filmmaking"

I would agree with this statement in regards to "Bananas", but I love, "Take the Money and Run". I don't care if it's bad. I still laugh at him playing the cello in the marching band and still laugh at the bank discussion over whether or not he has a "gub".

Enough of the irrelevant movie critisism already. If Woody kisses Scarlett Johansson on screen, we all know that Lance is going to slash the movie screen into shreds. Sure, Bill Murray can get away kissing her on screen because we all can identify with Bill. But with Woody, all we can think about is "why does that schmuck get the girl and I don't?" If Uma Thurman stars in the next Woody film, we may have to do an intervention for poor Lance... :-)

I'm glad somebody enjoys his movies, but I sure don't. His visions of Manhattan free of those annoying colored people offend me. His tangling with female beauties one-third his age, both onscreen and in real life, repulse me. And his patriarchal moralizing makes me want to slap him over the head. Yuck.

See Celebrity - I think it's my favorite of his aside from the obvious Manhattan/Annie Hall. It reminded me a lot of Nashville...and the Branagh character's obsession with the Winona Ryder character is really well drawn.

I think any category that includes Broadway Danny Rose should include Radio Days, because I don't have a single memory of either of them that I can place in one or the other movie. They were, like, similar and stuff.

Small Time Crooks was insanely awful, except for the first half hour. As soon as the news camera crew appears to document the fantastically successful cookie business, just stop watching - you'll be glad you did.

Also, Sweet and Lowdown definitely isn't "no Woody". You may have forgotten its framing device of being a Ken Burns-style documentary, with Woody among the talking heads and jazz experts who introduce various scenes.

I'd put Broadway Danny Rose in my top 5. It's not "serious Woody," but it's a brilliantly made comedy, and a great tribute to a now-vanished showbiz world. It also contains what I think is Woody's single best performance in any film, which has perhaps been overshadowed by Mia Farrow's wonderful playing against type.

"I don't see you folding balloons in joints. Stick with me and you're gonna be folding balloons in colleges and universities."

He reached an apex with Purple Rose, Hannah and Crimes and headed downhill from there.

I agree with Matt about Danny Rose, which in a way is the Sweet/Lowdown about the comedy world, except that there documentarians are sitting in a diner. Bullets is a perfect illustration of having no Woody making things better, and what is odd is that sometimes I see Cusack reverting to his own Woody mannerisms in later films. Zelig may be slight, but it added an adjective to our world.

I realize we should respect the artist and not care about the man and his personal life, but it's so hard with Allen and others. Suddenly this summer [good title for film?] I began an inner boycott of Tom Cruise films too.

i'm glad you liked deconstructing harry- i thought i was the only one who did. part of
what made it work for me was that he gave the jejune philosopher a rest. as if he relaxed, realized he's a creepy jerk, but a very funny one and got some energy from it.

I love Woody Allen, and most of all appreciated your point about the way in which Allen suffers from comparisons to his own work. For some reason, this happens to him more than any other director I can think of. Whether this is because of similarity in style across his works or something I couldn't say. I just cannot imagine the horror of having everything you do compared to something as incredible as "Manhattan." Quite a deal of injustice there I think.

It reminds me of an anecdote (potentially untrue) I heard about Joseph Heller when somebody told him he hadn't written anything since as good as "Catch-22" and Heller replied, "who has?"

That said, this discussion criminally ignores "What's new pussycat" from the list of early "funny ones." While not directed by Woody, it was written by him and makes for a great evening (Peter O'Toole and Peter Sellers as well as Woody are all awesome).

Also, I think Zelig is one of my pet favorites, undervalued in the list. I love the cameos from Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, and Irving Howe, and it has the added irony of becoming an illustration of educational decline in Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American." And, on top of all that, it has the scene with the rake.

Ultimately, however, as I've seen each film I have a similar list of favorites, but when judging each one individually on its own merits, I've never been dissappointed. Even in the era of his so-called decline, his films are ones I've never regretted seeing in the theatre or otherwise. I'd rather just worship him and wish so much of the rest out there could aspire to be as productive and enjoyable as him.

Man, everybody's got something to say about Woody Allen. What I hear most often is "Can't stand him!" with the implied comment that they can't stand his movies either.

I think that's what you're onto with the idea that he suffers from comparison to his own movies (earlier, funnier or whatever his last good one was). His movies are so clearly Woody Allen movies that some people can't get around that.

Me, I have no problem getting around that. I can take or leave his movies based on their individual quality. I'm not cowed by the fan view of taking into account that it's a Woody Allen movie any more than I'd hold that against a given film.

This is the long way around saying that I disagree with a lot of the received wisdom on which of Woody's movies are good and which are bad. (Manhattan no longer interests me.) I'm also less impressed overall than you are, Lance, with his career output. And I've been so turned off by the direction of the more recent work I've watched (or tried to watch) that I haven't seen a single one of the truly new Woody movies. (Husbands and Wives was unwatchable, Judy Davis notwithstanding, and Mighty Aphrodite was just too thematically creepy. That's about where I got off the Woody Allen train.)

I think maybe I've also overdosed on Allen's weirdly hermetic view of New York City. Having lived there, I can tell you it ain't nothin' like one of his movies. It's okay to have your own take on the city, but one must on occasion leave the upper west side, musn't one?

And, not meaning to hammer you, pal, because this is an excellent post but not listing Stardust Memories somewhere is not being honest somehow.

The only Allen DVD I own is Radio Days. It's got something you might not associate with Woody: charm. Anybody reading this blog should give it a try.

Oddly, I also think one of the best moments in a Woodman picture is in Stardust Memories: Woody's eating breakfast while his lover (Charlotte Rampling) lies on the floor reading the paper. Not reading, really, just browsing as she becomes aware he's looking at her. The camera is from his vantage as we take a long, luxurious look at her coyly glancing back between flipping pages of the paper while music plays in the background. Beautiful.

I'm with Matt...I love Broadway Danny Rose. Think it is a hell of lot more than a minor movie. Mina Farrow's line "Look see, I don't want no crap...I don't want no shit" should be enshrined as the motto of New Yorkers.

Woody is a wildly brilliant talent, but I have to admit, as much as I love so many of his movies (Stardust is among my favorites), I find the campy, neurotic, self-obsessed character grating, annoying, and a distraction. And yet, that's part of his shtick, a security blanket that was his path to success in the early days of his career. That neurotic, self-obsessed character he plays made his career.

I wish that he would get rid of it. He should have done so in the 70s.

The Allen film that I have always thought was underrated is Manhattan Murder Mystery which I think succeeded perfectly at what it set out to do which was to bring back the feel of the husband and wife comedy mysteries of the 1930s like The Thin Man series and films like The Ex-Mrs. Bradford and The Mad Miss Manton.

Another film I have always loved is Love and Death which was very reminiscent of his great New Yorker stories.

I'd have a little bit of re-arranging on your list, Lance, but not much. I think that being prolific can harm an artist sometimes, in that if he can turn out something good so often, his output much not have anything truly great in it. Also, the American general public still hasn't gotten over Soon Yi, and the "ew" factor from that relationship colors a lot of commentary about him, I think.